Rooney goes Retro

by Teen Vogue

Last week, I was in American Eagle, returning a weirdly-fitting dress and I saw something behind the register that completely pulled me out of my return-related grumpiness. It was a Rooney video. Nothing makes me feel happy like the sweet Rooney boys.

Rooney recently recorded a pretty amazing cover of Alphaville⿿s ⿿Forever Young⿿ ⿿ you can check it out on iTunes. So, with that inspiration, I asked Rooney drummer/singer Ned Brower to give me the band⿿s top five favorite ⿿80s songs. Here⿿s what he said:

⿿Here are five songs we love from the eighties in no particular order. We enjoy the 80s for it's endless amount of melodic pop songs. The 60s and 70s had great bands and cutting edge producers but the 80s delivered non stop hook filled ditties over and over again.

1. "Don't You Forget About Me" / Simple Minds

Besides it's use in the pivotal closing scene of the legendary John Hughes movie, "The Breakfast Club," this song was written by Keith Forsey who produced our self titled debut in 2003. This song is a real fist pumper that makes you feel like a bad mutha when you walk down the street.

2. "Somebody's Baby" / Jackson Browne

Once again, this song was used in a soundtrack. "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" made this song famous with it's simple keyboard line and perfect melody choices. Jackson Browne is more known for his organic 70s singer/songwriter material, but he really helped define the 80s with this one. Our friends, Phantom Planet used to cover this song and it always went down well even 20 years after it was written.

3. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" / Tears for Fears

These guys were unstoppable in the 80s when their album Songs from the Big Chair yielded 3 or 4 major hits. This was the first cover we ever did as a band way back when we were youngsters. Oddly enough, we brought it back last year and found it pretty tricky to play when we relearned it so I can only imagine how terrible it must have been when we first played it.

4. "Wild Boys" / Duran Duran

Duran Duran was one of the few bands that have gone down as a classic group from the decade that mainly spawned one hit wonders. They had endless amounts of hit songs and they are all great. Robert and I had the fortune of hanging out with Duran Duran bassist/songwriter John Taylor. He took us to see the Queen reunion with Paul Rodgers and was very cool to us. This song's lyrics remind me of...well, us.

5. "Forever Young" / Alphaville

We were hired to cover "Forever Young" by a television network so we all went out and learned Rod Stewart's hit song. We were then informed that was not the correct song so we went out and learned Bob Dylan's song with the same title. Once again, we were informed that was not the correct version. "You guys ever heard of Alphaville?" We learned this song in the studio, cut it in one day, and people loved it. I guess that makes it a fabulous cover choice though it wasn't really our choice...I like our version more then the original so there.⿿

Thanks, Ned. Rooney⿿s current album, Calling The World, is in stores now. At the end of this month, the band starts a headlining tour, including the following dates.